Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a new way of approaching life’s challenges. It’s about building personal power by using tools that build resilience and create positive change. These strengthen our ability to rise to the difficulties life brings and to find enjoyable ways to motivate ourselves and work through the blocks, opening up a new path forwards. Some examples of these tools are listed below.

Relaxation Methods, Mindfulness, Meditation, Heart Math and Imagery

Reducing the stress response is so important for healing and moving forwards. Together we will find your preferred method of doing this by exploring a myriad of tools. The mind is extraordinarily powerful and its thoughts do create physical and emotional suffering.

The truth is that we are not our thoughts; much of what goes on in our minds is not good for us and not true. Becoming aware of our thoughts and developing a new relationship to them is a big key to thriving. Our minds are full of thoughts from outside influences that invade our moment-by-moment experience. It is necessary for wellbeing to find a way to create distance from your thoughts and live more in this moment.

My favourite mindfulness/meditation tool is Heart Math.

Heart Math (Heart Breathing)

This is a science-based technology for taking charge of your life. It’s proven to help you reduce stress and anxiety by increasing your inner balance and sense of safety. Using this tool develops your heart intelligence and creates balance between your heart, mind and body. The development of “Heart Coherence” happens when this practice is used regularly. This state is shown to lead to the prevention of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and other serious illness.

Science shows us that when you achieve “heart coherence” – a scientifically validated state in which your heart and brain are energetically aligned and cooperating with one another – you’re able to significantly improve every aspect of your life.

The Heart Math technique has an overlap with Tonglen, a Universal Buddhist healing tool. This means it has a higher spiritual potential too for bringing compassion and blessings to the world.

The Healing Code

This healing modality was discovered by Alexander Lloyd in America who felt desperate to help his wife with her serious clinical depression (which was healed within 3 weeks of regularly using it). His findings were first published just last year. His book was the bestseller on the Amazon Mind Body Spirit list.

Since the healing of his wife using this approach, he has had many other positive results including other serious chronic disease.

The Healing Code affects Heart Rate Variability (HRV, the gold standard medical test for measuring stress in the autonomic nervous system). The Healing Code’s affect on HRV far beats any other healing modalities effect on stress. This is because it gets to the roots of the stress.

Emotional and physical symptoms in the body are the result of stress in the body which arises from traumatic events stored from the past (including our ancestors, read about the science of epigenetics) which disrupted the bodies energy system and then get triggered over and over by our thoughts and what we attract into our lives.

Tonglen

There is an ancient meditation called Tonglen, a “Heart Meditation” originally devised by Atisha, the great Tibetan mystic and Tantra master who lived from 982-1084 AD. This meditation contends that one can absorb the miseries of the world into the heart riding the in-breath, transform it into blessings and give it back to the world with the out-breath. This sounds oversimplified for sure but that is the magic of the heart: it is simple and extraordinary.

The positive thinkers ask you to breathe in joy and happiness and breathe out misery and pain. But this means you are adding your misery to the already existing mass of misery in the world. Also, there should be joy in your heart in the first place or else how would you give it to the world? It is like lending money when you have gone bankrupt.

The spiritual teacher Osho says, “The positive thinkers don’t know about the miraculous transformative power of the heart. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, sufferings cease to exist. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness. Then pour it out. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, you will like to do it again and again.”

Once you experience how pain and suffering can be transformed through the breath and heart, you may like to apply this method silently whenever people or events around you become hard to witness.

Instead of being disturbed by them breathe in the negativity and breathe out your peace. You have found the trick of being in the world and not belonging to it.

Don’t forget to tap too, using either the usual points or, if necessary, the subtler hand points. Tapping without a doubt empowers the process by connecting us into the delta brain wave state of higher consciousness.

Tonglen can also be extremely useful in your own EFT practice. If you find that you are unable to completely clear thoughts and emotions, perhaps you can’t find a specific event at the root of your issue, this is a perfect time to use Tonglen alongside your tapping. Bring your own thoughts, feelings and sensations and take these into your heart and the transformational Grace that is available there.

The Dalai Lama, who is said to practise Tonglen every day, has said of the technique:

“Whether this meditation really helps others or not, it gives me peace of mind. Then I can be more effective, and the benefit is immense.”

Another thing I love about Tonglen is its overlap with Heart Math. Could we be seeing a crossover between an ancient spiritual wisdom practice and a modern-day evidence-based resilience building tool? To me this is higher intelligence in action!